Friday, October 23, 2015

Today I wanted to share one of our favorite Halloween poems with you, that I turned into a little book for the children to make.

This is Jack-O-Happy.

This is Jack-O-Sad.

This is Jack-O-Sleepy.

AND THIS IS JACK-O-MAD!

But Jack-All-Broken in pieces small,

And baked in a pie is best of all.

Yum! Yum!﻿

I used to make this poem on a one sheet poster. I printed the four pumpkins and pie shape on orange paper. The children drew on each expression that matched the poem, then cut out the pumpkins and the pie. Then, they cut a few scraps to make the pieces of pumpkin. Finally, they glued the faces onto the right spot on the paper. This is a great activity to practice drawing emotions, cutting, and acting out emotions when we perform the poem.

I enlarged the paper to 11X14 when I printed it. The download has the poem and pictures all together on one sheet, and other sheets have only the poem on one page and the pumpkins on the other, in case you wanted to print that on orange paper, or if you want the children to draw all the illustrations!

I also made it into a little book. Just click HERE if you would like a copy of the book. Here are the pages. Just copy them one sided to two sided, and then fold it in half and staple it together.

When I want the class to quiet down, we do the poem with only motions and no words. They love that, too. I love when they scare me with no words. Their little hands go crazy! Sometimes, we can't resist the "BOO," so we do all motions except for that, "BOO." Believe it or not, it still quiets the kids down!

Here's a little tip I've been using for Writer's Workshop that has worked really well- so I thought I'd share it! I KNOW the kids are supposed to have writing folders- with anchor charts inside for the kids to use as reference. And they do. BUT- by the time the kids have their books spread out, and folders everywhere- and then papers here and there- it's a mess and there isn't room to write. (Maybe it's just me and my kids.) But, they don't really use the anchor charts much anyway- so I typed the lowercase letters and our sight words on a PDF document- just simple. I took a screenshot of it, and saved it as a photo. Then, I just project that photo on the Apple TV (or Smartboard) so we can all see it and use it for reference during writing. I have a word wall, too- but this is just another place to look. I collect the books after they write anyway, because I go through them and make sticky notes for myself to use to work with that child on the next day. I use the folders totally wrong mainly after we complete books to save them, or in case we want to go back and revise.

I also put this picture on my Primary Writing Prezi, so I just zoom in on it and leave it up. But you don't need to use that- you could just project the picture of whatever you want to use for reference.

This next idea was from a mom in my class. She sent in coffee filters for bowls for snack! Maybe you already know this fun fact- but why didn't anyone tell me?!

Genius!

This favorite of the week all started because I found these when I was grocery shopping:

So then, I wanted to have some great activities to go along with it. (If you give Carolyn Monster Snacks, she's going to want some activities to go with it...) SO I thought you might want to do a little monster work next week too, and I wanted to share some fun freebies with you! There are LOTS of them, but these are the ones I used with my class, plan to use next week, or just want to save to use whenever I'm in a monster kind of mood.

I found these erasers at the Dollar Tree and got quite. a. few. So... these will make a great sorting/patterning center, or great game pieces.(They are sort of a cross between monsters and robots I guess.)﻿

I found this cute little rock monsters magnets idea at Coast Inspired Creations. She has a tutorial about how she made them. I am going to have the children paint the rocks, then I will shellac them and hot glue on the eyes they choose. I have some larger stones, so some may become paperweights instead of magnets.

I always love these blow paint monsters from Raising Sparks. They are so easy and fun for the kids. I love how you just never know what they will turn out like! The children love when the colors mix. I have a roll of sticker eyes that worked well last year, instead of gluing on the googly eyes. Sometimes they don't stay on very well for me unless I hot glue them.

Then, I had the fabulous idea to just stick on the sticky eyes onto a piece of blank white paper and make copies of that. So I gave each child a piece of paper with four sets of eyes randomly placed on a paper. They could make monsters around the eyes. They had a ball! AND I didn't use up all of my sticky eyes- I just made copies of the one paper!

Make and Takes has a post about making these cute little monster bookmarks.

Erin Wing's adorable Monster Bookmarks are perfect to send home with books this week.

I love Jennifer Drake's How to Make a Decomposing Monster freebie to introduce the concept of decomposing numbers using our monster gummies! The kids loved it! I didn't make the monster box- but that would be precious.

We did this together as a class. I was just introducing the concept to the kids- and they did so well with it!

I love Rowdy in Room 300's Monster Mash activity. I use "real" googly eyes on the big monsters, and the children did a great job reading the ten frames on her worksheets!

Kreative in Kinder made this cute monster dice game FREEBIE. I am going to use it for RTI with my little guys who need some extra sight word help (or number help, or letter recognition help...). If they roll a three, they need to read 3 sight words for me before they can move 3 spaces. ﻿

BMore Teacher has these cute Monster Digit Cards FREE at her TPT store. If you don't want to use dice for the game above, you could just have the students draw one of these monster number cards.

Talia Testa has a GREAT I Spy Sight Word FREEBIE at her store that I can't wait to use.

﻿

Kay Rose has a great Monster Madness WH Questions FREEBIE. This will be perfect for having the children learn what questions are AND learn to answer a question with a complete sentence, which is something we work on a lot! I love this activity. She made it a game so that one student can ask another a question, and if the student gets it correct, he/she can color a monster!

I can't wait to use my Monster Manners FREEBIE from Growing Kinders this week. This packet has great activities for discussions about good manners. My class loved it last year! I love all of Kathleen's products. We love to discuss each card and decide if it is a good or bad choice. I also love her little listening monsters. The one listening with his heart is my favorite.